Ex-Palm CEO Carl Yankowski tapped to head Ambient Devices

It's been a while since we've heard from Carl Yankowski, the former CEO of Palm and Reebok -- not that we blame him for lying low these past few years, after guiding Palm through its 2000 spinoff from 3Com to a $30 billion market cap, only to see inventory of devices like the Palm V and IIIe pile up in warehouses and the company fall to less than five percent of its former value a year later. That's a hard act to follow, but it looks like he'll be getting a shot as the new CEO of Ambient Devices, makers of the Orb and other friendly glowing information appliances. Yankowski replaces David Rose, who founded the company in 2001 commercialize tech developed at the MIT Media Lab, and he sounds like he's ready to hand the company over, saying "With Carl leading the team, I am confident that our original vision for ambient information everywhere will become a reality for millions of consumers in the near future." What's interesting is that Carl's Wikipedia entry was last edited in November, and it says he's been running Ambient since August -- perhaps the puppetmaster has finally stepped on stage, eh?